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NASA Frees Their Robotics Software
kremvax writes "It's a field day for robotics hackers everywhere, as NASA releases the first installment of their CLARAty reusable robotic software framework to the public. According to the JPL press release, these modules contain everything from math infrastructure to device drivers for common motors and cameras, and computer vision, image, and 3D processing."
...ah never mind!
Fear the power of NTie!
Never free Robots or there software! What next, free monkeys?! the over use of exclamation points?!?
Seriously, this is a cool thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No seriously, NASA is an acronym not a proper name. National Aviation and Space Administration.
Kindly get it right. Oh yeah, this is slashdot...
The BBC does it as well, which is odd since they should use "Bbc" to be consistent.
But I'm from the Usa, so what do I know...
Time for robot war games without the remote control but with autonomous robots?
FOSS-running yet still-becoming-SkyNet robotic overlords!
-WtC
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
What's this JPL license that the summary mentions? Aren't there enough open-source licenses, already? Is this some kind of special NASA license, or is it an aerospace industry thing? And what does the "J" stand for, anyway?
'Scuse me while I go RTFA to find out about the JPL...
If you're a US tax payer, you've already paid for this software.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Err, nowhere in the summary does it mention the JPL as a license, it mentions the JPL as an entity which just so happens to be the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
However if you did RTFA you'd notice that the license shouldn't be considered "Open Source."
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Urge to tinker....rising....
It is free, runs on linux and mac, supports a wide variety of hardware, has libraries for 3d image recognition, was tested in autonomous robots on mars...
I work developing a similar system. I hope my boss does not come across slashdot, because my job would be seriously endangered.
(or perhaps i should only have a peek or two in the code)
Q: What's purple and works from home? A: A non-Abelian group. (It doesn't commute.)
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
As a result, this software isn't "free as in freedom".
That's strange. NASA itself seems to think it is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
I just could not help but think if the Wikipedia folks could now be able to start up a "WikiBot" were Mechanical, Electrical, and Software Embedded/Robotic Engineering could be documented.
BBC is an abbreviation not an acronym (acronyms must be pronounceable. Okay, you could say "bebekuh" but you sound ridiculous). Actually, the OP is Just Wrong. Acronyms tend to start out uppercased, then maybe get an initial capital only, then go to lower case as they become terms in their own right. Consider FORmula TRANslator -> FORTRAN -> Fortran -> fortran . LISt Processing -> LISP -> Lisp -> lisp. BInary digiT -> BIT -> bit. Graphics Interchange Format -> GIF -> gif.
As Nasa is the proper name of an organisation, and English capitalises proper names and a few other nouns (less so than German, though...), I expect the process to halt at "Nasa".
It was developed with fund provided by NASA.
However they seem to retain all rights for its commercial use.
Hmmm
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I wish I could own a NASA robot then...
Seriously. Jonny5 will be sending his manifesto to the New York Times pretty soon.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
If you read the license, you'll notice that you are not allowed to use the code for commercial purposes without paying a royalty and getting a different license (this one doesn't allow commercial use). Because of this, it does not qualify as Open Source (OSI definition) or Free (FSF definition) unless you're using another definition for one of these common licensing terms. For once we don't need to debate the merits of one or the other, because this license is neither.
it looks like someone has beaten them to implementing advanced humping algorithms.
No seriously, NASA is an acronym not a proper name. National Aviation and Space Administration.
... AIDS, SARS, NASDAQ, SETI, NAFTA and NATO spring to mind as likely candidates, I've seen them written out as Aids, Sars, Nasdaq, Seti, Nafta, and Nato, respectively.
Kindly get it right. Oh yeah, this is slashdot...
Nobody enunciates 'en ay ess ay' its just 'nasa'. Its may be an acronym, but its become a word in its own right too, like radar, sonar, laser, scuba, snafu, dos, bios, ram, flak, gestapo, etc...
Or perhaps if you want an examples of 'proper names'? How about:
Fiat - Fabbrica Italianna Automobili Torino
Gulag - Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh LAGerey
Gestapo - GEheime STAatsPolizei
Its really only a matter of time before some of the others become 'words'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
"The term is most commonly applied to the source code of software that is made available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions."
This has relaxed IP restriction. It can be used by any one for non commercial use.
OS and FS are often combined on slashdot, mostly because linux is both.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's the British way of doing acronyms that are said as a word rather than spelled out.
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
I'm very interested to see how the sex industry embrases the freed robotic arm software. Might give the true dimensions of the 'raped by robotic octopus' fantasy.
Sorry for posting anonymous for abvious reasons.
But there does exist another large robotics library that is completely free called Player. The project even has two complete simulators, Stage (for 2D simulation of many robots) and Gazebo (for 3D simulation of a smaller number of robots). Great project for any aspiring roboticists out there.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
The metric to Imperial conversions routines?
...and it's the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, not Aviation.
Correction: Fiat: Fabbrica ItaliaNa Automobili Torino
Hmm, interesting. Slashdot seems to have clipped my article attribution out. This was originally blogged at http://mrfuture.com/ And my quote was lifted directly from there.
Anyone know of a way to fix that after the fact, or does Slashdot dislike via mentions?
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
No seriously, NASA is an acronym not a proper name. National Aviation and Space Administration. Kindly get it right. Oh yeah, this is slashdot...
erm... It's "National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)", sonny.
So much about free when most of the items on their site are locked to "developers". Am I the only one to think that anything and everything NASA does should be open to the public?
After all they are the civilian agency established with tax payers dollars and all and any findings they make rightfully belong to the people. But what do I know...
It's a recursive acronym. NASA is 'Nasa Ain't So Awesome.' It was one of the things they updated when the old NASA was eaten up.
Though, as an aside, NASA's predecessor, NACA, was pronounced letter by letter.
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
Me: "My friends and I wanted to make a Moon landing video, what effects do we need to fake it?"
NASA: "Here, have ours. Even comes with a moon rock generator."
Me: "Sweet! I can make a 200 pound rock fall on one of the astronauts?"
NASA: "Yeah, but sometimes it makes a 200 kilogram rock instead. We still haven't ironed that stuff out."
I for one welcome our new open-sourced robotic overlords.
- Francis Ocoma
Please wait while Sig Request is being processed...
Anything that comes from a government lab should be in the public domain unless it was developed for military purposes. If our tax dollars were spent to build it, it is ours. Patent protection costs so much that the expenditures often counterbalance the licensing revenue.
Actually FORTRAN is supposed to be capitalized through FORTRAN 77 -- starting at Fortran 90 it was officially changed to title case with deliberate intent. It is not now nor has it ever been properly called "fortran". There have been many empassioned discussions on the topic of FORTRAN capitalization; the ANSI standards reflect what I described above, and I'm not aware of anyone arguing that "fortran" is accurate, only that "Fortran" should be "FORTRAN", even after FORTRAN 77. (Note: My spell checker actually objects to "fortran" and suggests both "FORTRAN" and "Fortran" as alternatives).
GIF should still be capitalized in all use. Frankly I've never seen it not capitalized except in places that have specific case conventions outside of normal language conventions, such as file name extensions and the like.
I don't know enough about the history of LISP/Lisp or BIT/bit to comment. I've never seen bit written as BIT, but I haven't read a lot of computer science papers from 1960 either.
Let me make sure I'm crystal clear on this issue: the US public funds NASA billions of dollars over many years to play about with robots in space, and then the same public is not allowed to use the software THEY PAID FOR to create down to earth, commercial robots? Think again NASA!
o pen_src/index.php
http://claraty.jpl.nasa.gov/man/software/license/
Doesnt that become FINAT?
Looking at the project site itself: http://claraty.jpl.nasa.gov/ it seems that most pages are restricted. whenever I want to see some real documentation, it's asking for creditentials.
n dex.php
:(
they even describe this in length here: http://claraty.jpl.nasa.gov/man/overview/access/i
so it's no free software, it seems...
at this rate NASA will soon be 'in discussions' with Microsoft
Some of the software comes from CMU, it seems. I wonder if anyone there has taken a crack at integrating CLARAty with Tekkotsu. Assuming that JPL has some pretty cracker-jack code,(which seems safe to me), then you could buy a used Aibo and a memory stick off ebay and suddenly have the makings of a world-class robotics lab in your living room.
And that's pretty spiffy.
http://monkeyd.sourceforge.net/
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This is interesting, because the Web site says the "CLARAty Open Source License", but the Press Release says the "JPL Open Source License"
There seems to be a discrepancy.
I for one nominate this as one of the first groups that OSI goes after for misusing the term Open Source!
on how clunky and poorly written the nasa software is, with obligatory Govt can't get anything right diatribes.
My master thesis finished this month is about component systems for mobile robotics and other domains, it's a called Experimental Robotics Framework (ERF), and is freely available at http://miarn.sf.net/. ERF makes it easy to setup experiments in robotics domains and even other domains by legoing (putting together) simple components to achieve lots of different experiments. It uses robotics sensors (+30) from Player/Stage/Gazebo and displays the experiments in 3d using opengl + fltk. Also it makes it trivial to interface with components via GUI (clicking in the world) or via text or speech ("robot go to"). The choice of foundation libraries makes it portable to any platform and the license is LGPL. Check-out the quality of the videos of ERF and those of Clarity... pretty much side by side no ?
As for the Clarity, it seems immature, i didn't even get it to install without modifying the provided configuration. Also it has that feeling of proprietary all over it. Just navigating the site is annoying with all those password pop-ups appearing. In ERF installation is with standard GNU autotools and rpms of more component kits are made available... total install commands needed: rpm.
NASA uses tcsh. Eat that, you bash loosahs...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
...before somebody hacks a Mars Rover and spells out "Slashdot" or "Break.com" in the sand. Or, maybe justs sets it up doggie humping the other rover and repeating over and over
"As you wish"
"As you wish"
"As you wish"
"As you wish"
"As you wish"
"As you wish"
This is cool. I'm going to attempt to get this running on my efika ppc embedded controller. I'm currently working on a usb to i2c
gateway. My sonar, motor control, vision recognition is all networked with i2c. The most difficult part of the project is highly
accurate dead recokining. This is really cool. Now I've got to look around for ideas to build a 6 wheel or track driven base.
quad optical encoders all the way.
Do you (or anybody) know if any of these packages deal with air flight? I'd like to build a VTOL UAV and focus on the application software rather than the flight control software.
:) Plus there might be some good advantages for interoperating with the flight code.
Yeah, I know I can buy one for $15K, but that's not as much fun.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No seriously, NASA is an acronym not a proper name. National Aviation and Space Administration.
Kindly get it right. Oh yeah, this is slashdot...
As long as we're bashing slashdot for not getting it right, it's National Aeronautics and Space Administration. A quick peek at their home page, www.nasa.gov, would have shown you that.
Too bad. NASA joins the sorry list of software authors (like ffmpeg), who provide cool stuff, but can't be bothered to cut releases. One has to setup and configure their YaM-Lite piece of software (a Perl-wrapper around CVS), and then use that to get their various software modules.
Yes, you can ask for a slice of the code as of a certain date, but you need to know, when it was stable. You could also, presumably, ask for a certain code branch, but that is still a moving target...
Better than no code at all, of course... But extra pain to port it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Immature? Yeah sure.. how many people have used ERF other than yourself for a project of any substantial size (e.g. >5 work years worth of effort)?
Has ERF gone through peer review, code reviews, any sort of formal verification and validation? Would you trust your life to ERF?
You DO know that this is software that's been developed by dozens of people, and more importantly, used and modified by even more people, and has flown to Mars on the rovers. Seems pretty mature to me...
Perhaps ERF and Claraty are solutions to different problems with different requirements and different scales of effort. If you're spending a billion dollars to send an autonomous rover to Mars, even a few months of getting the development environment configured is a drop in the bucket.
No. My emphasis on the N was to highlight that the original post had two "n" (Italianna) instead of one (Italiana).